Christy Potter's Blog

It’s finally starting to feel like autumn here in eastern Pennsylvania. The temperatures hung in the 80s well into October, as though they didn’t want to let go of summer either, as if they thought if they just ignored the calendar, winter would get tired of waiting and go somewhere else.

But the seasons changed overnight and the cold wind blew me to church and back this morning. I always find it interesting that spring winds feel jubilant, celebratory. They whip around you like bubbling laughter, excited and alive. But autumn winds feel sad, dreary, dark. A bit foreboding. Winter’s gonna getcha.

After church this morning, as I was in the fellowship hall having coffee and chatting with everyone, a man who is a regular attendee but hadn’t been in church today appeared in the doorway looking haggard. His grandson was with him, and they motioned me over.

“My girlfriend died this morning,” the grandson told me. Then his face went the wrong sort of shape and I put my arms around him and he sobbed. She had been fighting cancer for awhile – she had come to church with him once and we prayed for her every week – so her death wasn’t unexpected but still. Damn, that hurts. I held him and cried with him and thought about how hard it is to see someone so young be facing something like this.

A few parishioners and I prayed with him and his grandparents before they went back home to deal with all that waited for them. I sat alone in the sanctuary after they’d gone, just thinking.

His grandfather told me the young man had asked to come to church to tell me the news. I found it incredibly beautiful that in his time of pain, he sought out the church. This is what the church is supposed to be – a place people go when they need love and nurturing. It breaks my heart to think about how many people have run from the church instead. And why they’ve run.

This young man, in his brokenness, had come to us for love and comfort, and we gave it the best our human natures knew how. But what made me the saddest, sitting there in the sanctuary watching as he helped his grandmother into the car, was that I didn’t have any answers for him. He hadn’t verbalized any questions, but they were there. They had to be. They always are. Why? we ask when things go so horribly off the rails. Why did this happen? Why me? Why her? Why now? Could we have stopped it? Could we have fixed it? What if? Why?

There has been so much death and loss lately, so much violence, so much ugliness. I have friends who have lost loved ones of all ages and from various causes. Five minutes of TV news is enough to make me want to hide under the bed.

And I’ve come to realize there are no answers. I wish there were. It wouldn’t make the situations hurt any less, but at least if we could be handed a neatly typed sheet of paper that says “Here’s what happened and why, and here’s what you need to do now,” we’d have something concrete to cling to. As it is, we are all just flailing out there in our pain and our sorrow, and we can’t help but wonder what if, why, and what now?

I’m nearly three years into the most intense theological training of my life and I don’t have any more answers to those questions than I did before. I don’t know any seasoned clergy person who would claim to have all the answers, or even AN answer, because the truth is, we don’t know. We don’t know what if. We don’t know why.

But what I am holding onto tonight, as I sit in my warm, quiet house and think back on the day, is that this young guy walked into our church this morning overwhelmed with grief, feeling lost and broken, and we let him know that he’s not alone. We let him know that God loves him and that we love him. We wrapped him up in love before he went back out the door to face what is still to come.

Because when all is said and done, that’s our job as the church. To love. To show love and to be love. I always say “Christian” is not a noun – it’s a verb. Don’t just tell me you’re a Christian. Show me.

We are not here to tear each other down. We are not here to fight with each other, or to judge each other, or to throw even one of those proverbial stones. Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God, and the second greatest commandment is to love each other. You can’t say you do the first one if you don’t do the second. We are here to love each other. And if we don’t do that, then I’m sorry but we have failed not only as children of God, but as human beings.

When someone is hurting and they ask why, it’s okay to say “I don’t know why. But I’m here.” That’s the only answer. That’s love.

Love each other, guys. We’re all in this together.

The post Christy Writes: When There Are No Answers appeared first on Christy The Writer.

Here’s a fun summertime DIY project that you can do right at the comfort of your kitchen table. Especially if you don’t care about your table. Or your clothing. Or your blood pressure. Or anything else in your life.

Decide you want to make your own bath bombs at home. This is a great way to save money, know exactly what you’re putting on your skin, and put less packaging into the garbage. Think about how much the hippie girls who came before you would admire you. Get out the bath bomb kit your husband brought you before he wisely left the house and drove far away. Look how pretty those bath bombs are in that picture.

Notice that the instructions call for way more bowls than you actually own. That’s fine, you can improvise. You’re a hippie now. A free spirit. A rebel. Go find three mismatched cereal bowls, a salad bowl, a container that once held KFC mashed potatoes, and a Parmesan cheese shaker can that is empty yet somehow still in the refrigerator. Perhaps your husband is just being a free spirit as well. Decide to cut him some slack.

 

Follow the instructions exactly. First, it says to divide the citric acid between six of the bowls. Since you are committed to doing this right, pour it into a measuring cup, then attempt to do a calculation to figure out how much should go into each bowl. Then remember that the maths, you do not like them.

Decide it’s okay to just eyeball how much goes into each bowl. Free spirits don’t need math.

 

Put all of the sodium bicarbonate and corn starch blend into a mixing bowl.

Now it’s time to add the fragrance which is, incidentally, “Sweet Margarita.” Notice how amazing it smells. Think about making a real margarita. Remember that it’s 9:30 in the morning. Wonder if that matters. Decide it probably does.

 

Add the fragrance to the bowl and stir it up. Get a little on the table. Decide you aren’t going to mind. The old you would mind. The new hippie you finds a bit of a mess an artistic expression. Get a little more on the table, like it’s for good luck.

 

Divide the newly scented cornstarch mixture into yet six more bowls. How many bowls does this company think the average person has in their kitchen?!

 

Add the color to the cornstarch mixture. Try stirring it in with a fork. Get a lot more on the table. Start to mind. Give up and mix it with your hands.


Fall in love hard with the pink color. It is your favorite of the bunch and will match your bathroom. Gorgeous.

 

Continue following the instructions exactly and add a bit of water to each bowl. The mixture should be the consistency of “damp sand,” the instructions say, about the way you’d want it if you were going to make a snowball out of it. Question why they are making references to summer and winter in the same sentence. Then begin to question everything, including their statement that you will only need about a teaspoon of water in each bowl.

 

Damp sand? Is that a little vague or is it just you? Attempt to make a tiny snowball. It works, but it still seems like it might be too dry. Add more water. Add still more water. Then a little more. Now THAT is a good packing consistency. Look at you, so much smarter than those dim bulbs who made this kit. Damp sand snowballs THIS.

 

Now the instructions say to add the citric acid to each bowl of color. Pick up one of the bowls of citric acid and dump in into the bowl of pink color.

 

Realize you used way too much water when you add the citric acid and this happens:

Decide you didn’t like the pink anyway. Carry the bowl over the sink, while sizzly pink blobs drop to the kitchen floor like some kind of psychedelic re-enactment of Hansel and Gretel.

 

This time put much less citric acid into each bowl, thereby avoiding the whole bubbling-over situation again.

 

Per the instructions, pack the remaining colors into the molds. Notice that the stuff is still too wet. Wonder who you can sue.

 

Dump all the colors into one bowl and mix them before attempting to pack the molds again. Decide they’re pretty – they look like little Earths. And you are, after all, an Earth Mother now, saving the planet.

Try not to mind that your kitchen table now looks like this:

Put the finished bath bombs aside to dry for a bit. Come back later to check on them. Marvel at their perfection.

The post Christy Writes: When Bath Bombs Explode appeared first on Christy The Writer.

I have fairly small hands, and consequently, small fingers. I’m not complaining, mind you, because if I had small hands and giant fingers, I’d have a whole host of new problems I don’t think I want to contemplate.

But what this means for me, I’ve recently discovered, is that if I should want to buy a set of artificial nails, my options are pretty limited. The adult sizes are all huge on me, and while the child sizes fit me beautifully, I can’t begin to imagine what my life would be like if I showed up to my seminary classes with bright yellow nails emblazoned with “QUACK” on the thumbs.

Anyway, things have been a bit quieter this summer than what I’d gotten used to, although I am still preaching every week and studying for my ordination exams. I’ve also developed this habit of taking a nap nearly every afternoon. I don’t plan it, I will just be in the middle of doing some thing that I’ve deemed Important – like organizing a drawer or making a list – and I’ll just suddenly stop and go to sleep. Type A meets narcolepsy. This is your brain on summer.

I suppose the reason for these spontaneous sleeps is the same as the urge I’ve had for the past few weeks to purge the clutter from my life. I’ve gone through my house room by room, cupboard by cupboard, drawer by drawer, and made a pile of things I no longer need, no longer want, or that have sad memories creating negative energy around them.

It started, I think, when things began to shift in my life. Seminary classes ended for the summer, then Guy was declared cancer free, then not long after that The Rev got sick, and as soon as he was out of the woods, I found myself facing this giant void. My world had been filled stress and worry and fear, and all at once it was just all gone, whooshed away like bath water down the drain.

And I balanced there for a bit, on the rim of that void, unsure of what to do now that everything that had occupied my mind and heart was gone. And that’s when I discovered how beautiful a void can be. With the stress and worries gone and nothing in their wake, all of the things I love came rushing back in like the first breath of spring.

My husband is cancer free. My Rev is healthy again. My classes went well and I finished the semester strong. And I so, almost without realizing it, I began to immerse myself in the things I love most. Reading (not textbooks! Susan Sontag and John Updike and Agatha Christie… oh come here you magnificent literary bastards, talk fiction to me!) and cross stitch and practicing my flute and clearing clutter and redecorating my house and writing and learning sign language and running and planting herbs and bee-friendly flowers and taking long baths and watching House of Cards and Dr. Who and Bosch (my newest obsession, because Titus Welliver – yes please) and spending time with friends and, apparently, taking long and spontaneous naps.

None of these things are earth shattering but they are what I love and they are what fills my life right now. It makes me wonder why I let stress and worry and fear squeeze them out.

This past Friday night, Guy and I had dinner with two of our closest friends, and we sat in their garden and watched the sun set, talking and laughing and drinking prosecco and the deliciously plummy summer night air. There was no stress, just love and friendship, and damn if I didn’t even think to look at my phone until I got home.

There’s a lesson there. There’s a lesson in all of this. It’s about life and love and balance. And I think it’s a lesson worth learning.

The post Christy Writes: On Stress, the Void, and Press-On Nails appeared first on Christy The Writer.

I haven’t posted here in awhile. Not since January, actually, for a number of reasons, all of them important and none of them important at all. If you know what I mean.

Part of my absence we can chalk up to having so much going on. I can’t stand it when people say they’ve “just been so BUSY” because the truth is, we prioritize things we want to prioritize, and if I am being fully open here, I haven’t made this site a priority. Other things, I have. Like walking with Guy through bladder cancer. Finishing my second year of seminary. Preaching every Sunday. Sleeping. Spending time with friends offline, in the 3-D world. Writing a play. Trying to figure out what is happening to my country. Wondering how I can keep up my dream of changing the world when I’m not sure anymore that the world is all that willing to be changed. It can be depressing, I’ll admit. There are days when I just don’t even want to get out of bed.

But there are always ways, right? To pull yourself up. Sometimes the sad goes deep enough that we need professional help. Other times, all you need is to get a Wild Cherry Pepsi slush and go for a drive with the windows down, blasting Yes and pretending you’re still in high school. Or that could just be me. And that could have been just this afternoon.

But one of my favorite modes of self-care is one I started years ago. I was working at the newspaper back in my hometown, engaged to be married, and full of doubts about basically everything. I was in my early 20s and learning to adult and some days it went great, and other days I dealt with my frustrations like a toddler on a sugar high and no nap.

One evening I came home from work, kicked off my heels, put on my sweats, and as I was walking out of my bedroom, I noticed a little pile of stuff I had been accumulating over the previous few months. Greeting cards from friends, snapshots I had taken and liked, a pressed flower, a ticket stub from an Air Supply concert, a creative ad I had torn out of a magazine. These things had all found their way to me by one means or another, and I saved them, in that little pile, for no other reason than they made me happy.

In a moment of inspiration, I went to the closet and pulled out a photo album I had bought some time earlier. Then I poured myself a glass of wine, put a Yanni CD on the stereo (What? This was the 90s.) and sat down with my photo album and that little pile, and I spent the evening putting my collection into the photo album.

By the time I was finished, the stress of the day was just gone. And it was more than a matter of involving myself in a soothing activity for awhile. This was about finding the happiness inside of me. This was about disconnecting with the outside forces that I was allowing to make me unhappy, and reconnecting with the things that resonated with my spirit, the things that made my soul sing.

I started calling this scrapbook my Happy Book, and I would regularly start a new pile of things to be put into it. And when I’d have a particularly crappy day, I’d go home, pour a glass of wine or make a cup of tea, turn on the stereo, and lose myself in my Happy Book. I’d lose myself in all the happy. If I had a bad day and didn’t have a pile of stuff ready to go, I’d just thumb back through the pages and experience the same calming release, the same sense of reconnection to myself, to what matters to me.

I still have that original Happy Book, although I have since created additional volumes. It’s interesting now to go through them and see how some of my tastes have changed over the years, and how some of them haven’t changed at all. I’m pretty sure I will always love pink peonies, old hat boxes, and New York City. They’re just… me.

To this day, Pepsi slushes and “Owner of a Lonely Heart” notwithstanding, I find there is no better medicine for my sad or exhausted spirit like a walk through the original Happy Book. It’s low tech, it’s mellow, and it’s wonderful. I don’t show it to very many people, because in a way it’s like my diary, a snapshot of my soul, splayed out on the pages in living color. But those who have seen it seem to understand how sacred it is. And I know there are other Happy Books out there now. And that makes me happy too.

 

 

The post Christy Writes: On the Creation of the Happy Book appeared first on Christy The Writer.

Take my hand.

I am your friend.

I don’t judge you, I won’t persecute you,

I will never harass you,

And above all,

I do not hate you.

Hate is a ridiculous emotion,

a hiding place for the weak-minded,

born out of nothing but ego.

Along the way I was handed the label

of “White Middle Class American”

but I don’t wear it. I threw it away years ago.

I am a soul, a spirit,

a creative flame, a human being.

I have come to realize

how sheltered my life has been,

how much of the world lives

beyond the borders

of my safe, Sunday morning existence.

At school they showed me

the lines on the map.

This is where you live, right here,

so that’s who you are.

Here’s a little flag to wave. Be a good girl.

But why should the lines on the map

dictate who I am?

An accident of fate put me where I am.

An accident of faith woke me up

to the realization that none of it matters.

Take my hand.

I am your friend.

I am a Christian. I am a pastor.

And if the church has hurt you,

please feel my apology,

in your soul, where it hurts most.

Take my hand.

I am your friend.

The world is becoming increasingly smaller

and the knowledge that we are all one

is pressing in on us more every day.

For some, that knowledge draws a line in the sand.

Us versus them.

You versus me.

Us versus us.

Where does it stop?

How can it stop, if we won’t stop it?

Rub out the line in the sand,

the lines on the map,

the front lines, the soup lines,

the grooved lines on roads we have traveled

too many times.

Take my hand.

I am your friend.

The post Christy Writes: I Am Your Friend appeared first on Christy The Writer.

I think, if we were to take all the stories of outrageous faith in the Bible and line them up in order of their WOW factor, we’d find the story of Noah really close to the top of the list, if not the very top.

The story of Noah and the Ark is one we’ve probably all known since we were very young. It’s a Sunday School favorite and one I’ve seen used a lot of times as a Vacation Bible School theme. It’s an amazing story.

And there are a lot of angles from which we could look at the story of Noah. Persistence, definitely. Obedience, sure. How to build one really big honking boat, absolutely.

But what I want us to focus on here this morning is what may be the singularly most amazing part of the story of Noah, and that is the amount of faith Noah demonstrated.

Let’s do that thing where we go back and get a running start here, then jump into the story.

We don’t know a lot about Noah’s background. What we do know we find in Genesis 5-9. Noah was married (his wife is only named as Mrs. Noah – don’t even get me started on that) and had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth, all of whom were married.

We also know that while Noah was building the ark, which is estimated to have taken a whopping 120 years, his father Lamech and grandfather Methuselah were still alive and may have even helped him out a little when he was building his boat.

We also know from the genealogy the Bible gives us that Noah was part of the tenth generation of the human race. Genesis 5:29 tells us his name is related to “comfort” and “rest.” Which is little ironic when you consider what he’s going to be going through.

And we know, Genesis and Ezekiel both tell us, that Noah was a Godly man. He was a VERY Godly man. The Bible says he “walked with God.” In fact, Bible scholars place him right up there with Enoch. This is an interesting thing – let me go off roading here for a minute.

The Bible says that both Enoch and Noah walked with God. Enoch, as we know, didn’t die – instead, God took him. Enoch had his own personal rapture – God just whisked him home to heaven.

So when we compare Enoch and Noah… well, Noah got a whole different kind of deal than Enoch did. And this is why I am holding Noah up as today’s example of Outrageous Faith.

Noah’s life was spared in the flood, but he wasn’t spared from seeing the flood, from hearing the cries of those swept away by the waters. He wasn’t spared from the realization that people he knew and cared about were destroyed along with everything else.

The story of Noah and the flood is even more amazing the deeper you dig…

For the full message, click below:

The post Christy in the Pulpit: Noah’s Floating Faith appeared first on Christy The Writer.

In one of my classes recently, we were talking about the Nativity story, and how our cultural perceptions shape how we view it. To illustrate her point, the professor brought up artwork of the Madonna and child, and in the first batch, they were both very European. Light skin, round eyes, rather non-descript clothing of ordinary colors and textiles.

Then she typed in “Madonna and child, Africa.” The images came back with a Mary and Jesus who were not only very dark-skinned, but clad in traditional African garb.

Then the professor typed in “Madonna and child, China.” Same thing. Very distinctly Asian features and clothing.

Even as fledgling theologians and seminarians surrounded by many other cultures, it was startling to us to see these versions of Mary and Jesus that we weren’t used to.

We might not have consciously realized that we viewed Mary and Joseph and the baby as light-skinned and European looking, but we did.

This isn’t uncommon, this business of seeing Jesus through our personal lens. Because Jesus never has fit the image of what people expected him to be.

That’s what we’re seeing here, in today’s Gospel reading. John the Baptist finally sends word to Jesus and asks if he’s really the Messiah or if they should all be waiting for someone else entirely.

Let’s let that sink in for a moment.

John the Baptist wasn’t even sure anymore that this person was Jesus.

We heard on the first week of Advent that John and Jesus were some kind of cousins, born not too far apart. John was the prophet sent to prepare the way for Jesus. And now, after Jesus starts his ministry, John is wondering if he’s the Messiah after all?

Why?

Because Jesus doesn’t fit what John was expecting.

Jesus didn’t fit what the Jews were expecting.

Jesus didn’t fit what the world was expecting.

The promised Jewish Messiah was to be of David’s bloodline. David was the most celebrated and beloved of the Kings of Israel, and he was a true king.

How could this peasant, who by his own admission had no place to lay his head, be the next king? How could he deliver anyone?

To hear the full sermon, click here:

 

The post Christy in the Pulpit: What Does Your Messiah Look Like? appeared first on Christy The Writer.

“I went to bed and woke in the middle of the night thinking I heard someone cry, thinking I myself was weeping, and I felt my face and it was dry. Then I looked at the window and thought: Why, yes, it’s just the rain, the rain, always the rain, and turned over, sadder still, and fumbled about for my dripping sleep and tried to slip it back on.” – Ray Bradbury

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As I write this, I’m in the car with Guy, speeding through a night that’s dark as only night on the prairie can be, heading back to Pennsylvania after several days visiting my mother in Kansas. Between those lines, please read that I am coming off of five days of Christmas candy, ham, cheesecake, wine, bread, butter, cinnamon rolls, and evening glasses of rumchata – all of which we offset by nothing more strenuous than moving from the dining room to the sofa to watch “Grease.” Rama lama lama, y’all. Vacation rocks.

Christmas is over and, as always happens to me right about now, I’m thinking about New Year’s. I find New Year’s a mixed bag of blessings. I love the idea of twelve months full of fresh, white, unmarked pages, just the mystery of it all.

And even more than the mystery, I love the possibilities. I love new beginnings and fresh starts, even though I long ago lost the mystical feeling I had about about New Year’s when I was a kid: waking up and running to the window of my bedroom and looking out eagerly, only to see that it looked exactly the same as it had the day before. And although this happened every year, I always felt disappointed and vaguely ripped off. Maybe we should move New Year’s to spring or fall, when at least there’s something interesting to look at outside other than January’s drabness. The Jews have the right idea.

But the fact remains that even though the new year always looks the same as the old year, there is still that squirmy little happy bit of something inside me that can’t wait to see what surprises are in store for me.

I’ve noticed the trend to blame 2016 for a lot of the lousy things that have happened recently – and yes, it did grab a weird assortment of celebrities, whatever that’s about. And I know a number of people who have loudly and repeatedly stated that 2016 can’t be held responsible for the ills we’ve suffered as a society, because it is only a year and years don’t kill people… to which I say yeah, no kidding, and good job missing the point. I for one am tickled to hear everyone coming together and dumping the blame on 2016. It sure beats pointing the finger at each other.

That said, I have no great love for 2016, but I can honestly say I am able to take the advice of James and count it all as joy. While I was in the thick of some of those moments, not so much, but I’m thinking back on all of it tonight, as I’m looking out at the dark prairie and vast night sky which has a way of restoring my mind to its factory settings, and I’m able to find the joy in all of it.

Guy’s cancer battle took a large and painful bite out of the year, but it brought us closer in a lot of ways, it gave me new empathy for people who are diagnosed with cancer or have a loved one who is, it strengthened my relationship with God, and it showed me who my true friends are… and aren’t.

And of course during all this, life continued to happen, as life has a way of doing. I had my studies, my preaching, my friends, my family, my writing. I had moments as profound and complex as planning my future, and as simple and beautiful as holding the soft, cool, wrinkly hand of an 84-year-old friend as we sat together and loved each other and the life that brought us across each other’s paths.

There were moments of perfect peace and that deep current of happiness that sometimes runs through me with little explosions of light and love along the way – like spiritual Pop Rocks – and times of such wrenching sorrow that I wondered if I would ever be able to get out of bed again.

It’s in those dark moments that it’s hard to find the joy. I know. Believe me, I know. To even think about trying to find joy when your very soul is so bruised you can’t even draw a full breath is pretty much impossible. But it was in those moments of abject loss and anguish and anger that I learned it’s okay to not look for joy. In those moments, you just can’t.

But what you can do is wait. Breathe. Sit with the sorrow, even when it starts to really piss you off like that one drunk person who won’t leave even though the party has been over for an hour. Sit with it. Listen to what it is telling you. And, to paraphrase Pema Chodron, when it has taught you what it came to teach you, it will move on. And the joy will find you again.

Happy New Year, my friends. Here’s to 2017. Love each other, guys – we’re all in this together.

Kansas

The post Christy Writes: Goodbye, 2016 appeared first on Christy The Writer.

So we’re back in New York City. The tumor has made a reappearance in Guy’s bladder and he is in surgery as I write this. The oncologist has assured us that there are many treatment options to still try, that there is every reason to not even think about giving up hope. This is what I’m holding onto right now. That, my faith, and my loved ones. Still, the pit of my stomach doesn’t like this news.

I’m sitting by the window, looking down at midtown traffic and scattered Christmas decorations, the only color in a sea of gray. A sprinkling of snow would glitter things up a little, but Guy is cranky enough when he comes out of anesthesia – no way would I want to tell him we have to travel home in the snow.

Across the street, kids play a raucous game in their fenced-in school yard. They don’t know how I’m feeling, and even if they did know, they couldn’t understand. Life is fleeting. Health is fragile. I look at all the small heads in stocking caps and furry hoods and send down a blessing, a prayer that they will never understand how I feel right now.

I’m in the waiting room at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, a place I’ve become sickeningly familiar with as this is Guy’s third surgery in the past four months. The waiting room is full of people. Like I told my mother, I find that good news and bad. Good because it means these doctors are good at what they do. Bad because wow, so many people have cancer.

I have Guy’s glasses on top of my head and his wedding ring on my thumb. It feels weird, wearing these pieces of him that are so much a part of who he is, while he is nowhere in sight.

I wonder how many people sitting around me are in the same boat with me, waiting for the nurse to come out and call their name, and how many people are in Guy’s boat, out cold but knowing as they were going under that there is something growing inside them that doesn’t belong there. Something that has cost some people everything. Everyone in this room is in one boat or the other, a fact that makes me feel simultaneously comforted and sad. I’m resisting the urge to move around the room and hug everyone right now. How did this happen to all of us?

There’s a young woman with long hair and sparkly gold sneakers, two older women who are both talking without appearing to breathe at all, a man in an expensive-looking suit, another man I swear I’ve seen on TV, a woman wearing black suede boots and eating orange slices out of a sandwich bag, an elderly man who is tipped completely to the side in his chair and snoring in an oddly musical way. Old, young, black, white, couples, singles, men, women. Wherever we all were and whatever we were all doing yesterday, or last week, or last year, right now we are all here. A few cells go haywire and just like that, the playing field is level. What a price to pay to be one with each other.

Love big, my friends. Call someone. Hug someone. Forgive someone. Love as big as you can, and then love a little more. In the end, it’s all we’ve got.

 

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